“Spetsfond” – the prohibita from 1937–1939 at the National Art Museum of Ukraine" Yulia Lytvynets

“The Spetsfond 1937–1939 exhibition, devoted to a terrible chapter in the history of the museum, the existence of a special, secret collection of prohibited items, namely the spetsfond, was open from 23 January to 24 May 2015 at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. It invited the viewers to discover the works of Ukrainian artists repressed by the Soviet power. Many were made available to visitors for the first time since they were included in the spetsfond.

From the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, leading museums in the territory of the former USSR held special collections, known to the museum staff as spetsfond collections. Their task was not to protect exceptional masterpieces or unique works. The artefacts that were included in the category were earmarked for destruction.

The separate secret collection of the National Art Museum of Ukraine (at the time the State Ukrainian Museum) developed from 1937 to 1939. These were the works of “enemies of the people”, “formalists”, “nationalists” – those whom the party ideologists believed to “deform reality” and post a threat for the “new society” were brought here from Ukrainian museums and from the special collection of the Ukrainian Artistic Exhibition. This is how the works of Oleksandra Ekster (1882–1949), Oleksandr Bohomazov (1880–1930), David Burliuk (1882–1967), Viktor Palmov (1888–1929), Oleksa Hryshchenko (Alexis Gritchenko, 1883–1977), Mykhailo Boichuk (1882–1937), Mykhailo Zhuk (1883–1964), Mykola Ivasiuk (1865–1937) and many other artists made their way into the National Art Museum. Most names and works were for a long time struck from the history of Ukrainian art. The fates of the artists were tragic. Accused of nationalistic and counterrevolutionary activity, Mykhailo Boichuk, Zofia Nalepińska-Boichuk, Ivan Lypkivski, Vasil Silvestrov, Mykola Ivasiuk, Ivan Padalka, Vasyl Sedlar, and Illa Shulha were executed. Onufrii Biziukov and Kyrylo Hvozdyk received long prison sentences. Those who left Ukraine in time managed to survive: Iosyp Hurvich, Iryna Zhdanko, Oksana Pavlenko, and Antonina Ivanova moved to Moscow, while Abram Cherkassky made Kazakhstan his home. Those who survived changed their lives and their artistic style for ever.

This inventory book of the spetsfond collection from 1939 includes 1747 items including paintings, prints, book covers, photographs, sculptures, vessels, museum files, posters, crosses, icons, books, diplomas, correspondence, and press clippings. The “reason for transfer” column reads: “formalism”, “nationalist”, “enemy”, “arrested”… The collection was stored in a separate room, accessible only to the director and the main curator. A special commission agreed the lists of the artists whose works were to be destroyed first.

During the Second World War, a small proportion of the works from the collection were evacuated to Ufa (together with other museum exhibits). While the German army was withdrawing from Kyiv, an entire transport of works of art was removed from the city’s museums. It included some of the spetsfond collections. Most of the works transported to Germany never returned: of 26 works by Abram Cherkassky, 15 remained, and of the 24 by Viktor Palmov, only 16. The lost paintings include David Burliuk’s “Mamai the Cossack” and “Worker Village”.
After 1944, the works from the pre-war collection were divided into categories (prints, painting), and again deposited as a classified spetsfond with the same level of secrecy. A new threat loomed over the spetsfond early in the 1950s: “following the order of the Committee for Art operating under the auspices of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union No. 184 of 17 February 1953, a special commission examining the collections of the Soviet branches operated in art museums of the city of Kyiv to sequester the works of no exhibition value…” Nearly all the works from the spetsfond collection were included in the last, fifth category, i.e. works with no museum significance, and earmarked for destruction. At the time, most paintings were taken out of their frames and rolled up. Paradoxically, this step saved the collection from destruction. Category-zero works did not belong to the collection, and as such were not accounted for in the reports and not covered by controls.

Beginning with the late 1980s, the assiduous work on the investigation of these works and their transfer to category one began. Forgotten names returned to the history of Ukrainian art, and the Ukrainian avant-garde was rediscovered. Plenty of blanks were successfully filled thanks to the opening of the Sectoral State Archive of Ukraine Security Services, where the files of the executed artists had been preserved.

Many works from the spetsfond collections returned to the viewers long ago, for example, the paintings by Viktor Palnov and Vasil Sedlar; yet there are also works that have not been exhibited since the 1930s, such as the works by Ivan Lysenko and Yevhen Horbach. For more than four years, the staff of the Collection Department and the conservation officers unrolled and renovated the works, giving them new lives. Yet the work still goes on, and the spetsfond exhibition project is only one of the steps on the long path of conservation and rehabilitation of an indelible part of Ukrainian art history.

Ninety-eight works, conventionally divided according to themes, are presented in three exhibition halls: the first houses works devoted to war and uprisings, or precisely what the creation of the “new Bolshevik state” began from, the second paintings of women and industrialisation of rural economy, while the industrial, worker culture was presented in the third. The works from the spetsfond hoard that have long since taken significant places in the regular exhibition were marked with spetsfond plaques. Thus, a visitor could not only comprehend the size of the collection but also analyse the “blank spaces” in the history of Ukrainian art.

In the Soviet days, the study of Ukrainian art of the first three decades of the 20th century and its promotion were conducted using the examples of “socialist realism” only. The existence of the avant-garde, modernism, and “formal currents” was concealed as a manifestation of bourgeois, “anti-Soviet” art. In recent decades, however, the Ukrainian avant-garde and modernism have returned to scientific circulation. A serious gap existed between them and the actual “socialist realism”, one that researchers could not fill due to the lack of access to visual materials. The return of the spetsfond works to both viewers and researchers makes it possible to trace the origin and transformations of the artists’ style under the impact of current Ukrainian social and political reality. Until 1932, Ukrainian artists could go abroad, which meant their works were able to reflect the best standards of European art. Similarly until 1932, at foreign exhibitions, artists from Ukraine were presented separately. Nonetheless, later their numbers significantly dropped and melted in the general mass of “Soviet art”, which later still became “Russian”. Some works of students of artistic schools clearly illustrate the stages of education that so far have been only known from fragmentarily preserved archives. The analysis of the spetsfond charged the museum with the task of presenting them in the permanent exhibition, and researchers with investigating not only the 1930s, but also the impact of the period on the later development of contemporary art.

Translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Kotyńska

Yulia Lytvynets – head curator at the National Art Museum of Ukraine (Kyiv), curator of the “Spetsfond 1937–1939” exhibition.